Page 36 of Whiskey Tango Foxtrot

“It’s just the two of us here.” I leaned in closer to her and whispered, “I won’t tell anyone, promise.”

She giggled. “Well, I’ve always sort of had a thing for Rabbit. I used to crush on Steel, but he transferred to the Sierra High Chapter.”

“Do you think Rabbit knows?”

She shook her head and took a sip of her drink. “No, he doesn’t notice me, or any of the other girls. He talks big about hooking up all the time, but if he does it, it’s almost never here, and almost always with a girl who isn’t sticking around.” She sighed long and her shoulders slumped with the tension she let out on that breath. “I think he has a thing for Cherry’s sister. Cherry and Chastity work over at Ruby’s as dancers. It’s hard to beat that twin act they do whenever Chastity actually shows up. That girl is pure trouble though, and not the good kind. I don’t know what Rabbit sees in her, but it’s a whole lot more than he’s ever seen in me.”

“Is he mean to you?” I was just drunk enough that I was about to defend this girl to the man himself, if only I could conjure him out of thin air. I may have had a brief run-in with the BRATs when I first got here, but Sherry Baby had never been anything but sweet to me.

“No, nothing like that. It’s more like I’m invisible to him now.”

“Now?”

“We were together once before, I had one wild night with him, and then the next day when he looked like he was headed towards me for more than just breakfast, another brother cornered me. I had to watch as Rabbit walked away without another word. He never touched me again after that.”

“Well, that sucks,” I stated, my words the tiniest bit slurred.

She just shrugged before Rage and Charlie reappeared from the backroom looking rumpled and wearing shit eating grins on both of their faces. “What’s going on, ladies?”

“Rage,” Sherry Baby acknowledged him. She said nothing to Charlie though, and I wasn’t sure if it was a deliberate snub, or if she didn’t think Charlie wanted to hear from her. Either way, I figured that was their dynamic to work out.

Before I could people watch and see how that situation played out my cell phone started ringing in my pocket. I pulled it out to see Michelle’s name. “Michelle? What’s going on?”

I listened as she freaked out, screaming and yelling into the phone, sometimes slipping into Spanish, then back to English again. I got the gist of what she was saying though. My brother had been missing for two days. She thought he’d been with her cousin Lou, but Lou came around to see why Frankie never showed, and it quickly became evident that something was wrong.

“When is the last time you saw him?” I finally managed to ask, wondering if my brother was dead or alive had just sobered my ass right the hell up.

“Put it on speaker phone,” Rage demanded as he strolled up beside me attempting to look nonchalant, but I knew better. Tension rested heavy on his frame as he stood stock-still waiting for me to do as I was told. I didn’t hesitate in following orders either. These guys were protecting me, the least I could do was help them out by letting them know our enemies might have captured or killed my brother.

Rage listened while tapping away on his own cell phone. I wasn’t certain whom he was talking to until he started speaking again. “Michelle, this is Rage, Vice President of the Aces High MC Dakotas Chapter, there will be a man knocking on your door in two minutes. He is a friend of ours, and will be helping you gather your things so we can get you somewhere safe,” Rage informed her.

Michelle immediately started wailing. “Oh my God, he’s dead. I knew it. How am I going to explain this to our baby?”

“Michelle, you need to calm down. No one said Frankie was dead. We just want to get you somewhere you can be protected, okay?”

“Yeah,” she managed to blubber out the word just as we heard a distinctive knocking on her front door. She shrieked, and no doubt jumped at the sound. Still, she asked. “Is that your man?”

“Yeah, that’s our guy,” Rage confirmed after checking his phone. “Go let him in.”

“Okay, are you bringing me to Liza?”

“No,” Rage told her as he looked at me, his eyes full of warning. It was obvious he didn’t want me protesting for some reason so I stayed quiet and listened. “It’s too dangerous to have you both in the same place. It makes us a bigger target. We’re sending you somewhere else, but you won’t know where you’re going until we get you there. That’s a precaution to keep you safe, because you don’t know who you can trust right now, Michelle. You get me?”

“I understand.”

I understood too, but I didn’t necessarily like it. I had hoped to see Michelle so I could keep her calm. The last thing she needed was to lose her baby because of all this drama her ex-boyfriend created. Once Rage got Michelle talked down and his buddy in the door at Michelle’s place helping her pack he called one of the guys that had gone to Casper, Wyoming. That had been determined to be the best mid-point between the Aces High MC clubhouse and the one owned and run by the King’s Demons in Boulder, Colorado. It was where Tango had gone earlier, and now I wondered if my brother was there too, or if we would ever find out what happened to him.

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